Royal Dutch Shell has imported its second spot shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) this fiscal, industry sources said.
Shell yesterday received a LNG cargo from Qatar at its Hazira import facility in Gujarat, they said.
QatarGas, a natural gas company of Qatar, sold the shipment to Petronet at about $5.20 per million British thermal units. This price is before levy of 5 per cent customs duty, regasification charges, local taxes and margins.
Shell India's spokesperson could not be contacted immediately for comments.
The company had imported a cargo at $4.93 per mmBtu in early April.
Petronet LNG, the company that operates nation's only other operational LNG import facility at Dahej, in Gujarat, has not imported any shipment from the spot market since December.
The flooding of gas from Reliance Industries' eastern offshore KG-D6 field, coupled with no spare capacity in GAIL India's pipeline network that transports gas to users in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, had cramped out spot LNG purchases.
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As a result, Petronet did not bring its own spot supplies since December, though Gujarat State Petroleum Corp (GSPC) has imported two cargoes at Dahej. GSPC has its own pipeline network in Gujarat to evacuate gas to customers.
GSPC had contracted nine cargoes at the prevalent rate of the Henry Hub of US plus $1.5 per mmBtu. Two of these cargoes were imported in April and May.
Sources said Petronet currently is only getting LNG under its long-term contract of 7.5 million tonnes a year with RasGas of Qatar.
It may resume purchases from the spot market in the second half of 2010, after new pipelines are commissioned.
India's LNG imports in 2009 rose 9.2 per cent to 8.93 million tonnes.
State-backed Petronet LNG, India's largest LNG importer, completed an expansion of its Dahej import terminal in March last year to baseload capacity of 10 million tonnes a year and peaking capacity of 11.5 million tonnes a year from the previous baseload capacity of 6.5 million tonnes per annum.